Within such areas as the manufacturing industry, problems are experienced in the efficient handling of elongate objects on their transport between machining stations, on infeed into and discharge from the machining machines and also in the very storage of elongate objects before and after being machined. In particular in those cases in which machining takes place a large number of times of one and the same elongate object--and hence handling of such elongate objects takes place many times--the importance will readily be perceived of an efficient handling of such objects with slight or no manual labour input. For the elongate objects themselves, it is vital that the machining which has been carried out is not damaged or affected to any appreciable extent by handling and storage in connection with the machining proper.
The method most commonly employed today--despite all of the modernization which has been introduced with the aid of industrial robots, computers etc.--is to pick the object manually from and to a box, a container, a pallet etc., in applicable cases by stacking. The time consumption for this manual picking is considerable since the operation is repeated many times, with the result that the machining work is rendered considerably more expensive because of the handling process itself. In addition, the frequency of damage caused in such manual picking is considerable.
Moreover, objects which are stored loose in boxes, crates etc. are relatively theft-prone, stock-taking of objects in stores etc. is impeded and more expensive and, finally, production-line machining defies on-the-spot monitoring, for example for estimating delivery times etc.
The storage of flexible sheet material in rolls or coils is previously known in this art, for example for strip steel, such storage generally providing adequate protection for sheet material and, moreover, creating favourable conditions for rational handling at a workstation, where, for instance, infeed to a punch for punching details from the strip steel may relatively easily be automated. Coiling of such a roll is generally effected on a drum and, after completed coiling, the roll is strapped to prevent unwinding.